The Breakfast Club
by Arynn Octavia
Summary: Five very different high school students find out during a Saturday detention that they’re really not so different after all, but what will they do with this knowledge? A/U, obviously. Expect drama, humour, action, and SLASH. Rating may change.


The Breakfast Club

Shermer High School

Shermer, Illinois

_~*Peter Petrelli*~_

He dipped his brush in the black paint and slowly raised it up to the surface of the canvas. Head cocking to the side in concentration, he jerked his arm in wide sweeping motions, adding the last details to his painting just as the bell was sounding.

"That is very good, Peter. I love the new dark turn your work has been taking. Shall I add this one to the show at the coffee house? They love your work over there, and the owner would like to sell more of them."

"Actually, no. I'll be keeping this one. It's a personal one."

"Very well. You're one of the most talents students I've had the pleasure to teach, have I told you that?" his teacher smiled warmly at him.

"Only every day," he smiled back at her.

"Oh, speaking of, dress rehearsal has been moved back one hour. Would you mind telling the rest of the cast?"

"Sure, Ms. Lampert."

"This is going to be the best run of Phantom of the Opera Illinois has ever seen. Well, off with you! Enjoy your weekend, and take care of that voice!"

"You too! Thanks, Ms. Lampert. See you on Sunday."

Peter put his big ear-covering headphones on and pressed play on his iPod. He had a free period last hour of the day, and normally he would go home at this time, but as he walked through the halls to the student parking lot, something caught his eye, and his mood darkened. Instead of going on with his day he leaned back against the wall, hair falling in front of his black-lined eyes, as he glared at the new Army recruitment posters that had been erected where the old ones he had torn down had been.

It sickened him, the way the school officials allowed the military to recruit high school students on school bounds to join this despicable war. He had joined a group of students and parents who had protested when the posters and flyers had first been placed in the commons, but the school board had been unresponsive. The students had taken to ripping the posters down whenever new ones appeared, but new ones kept reappearing. The newest poster was twice as big as the older ones had been. Something more drastic had to be done.

He would never know why he did it, maybe it was Johnny Rotten growling 'Anarchy in the UK' in his ear, or maybe it was the recent death on the battlefield of someone who had been a student in this very school not more than a three years ago. Maybe it was the fact that the boy had lived across the street from him. Maybe it was the fact that the sound of his mother's screams and sobs had traveled through the walls of her house, across the still fall air, and into his bedroom as he tried to sleep the night that she found out. Maybe it was the painting he had just finished, the one he had started the day after that. Whatever it was, he waited until the bell sounded signalling the start of last period, and the hall emptied of students. Peter reached in to the messenger bag that was slung over his shoulder. In it among the varous random things he carried with him at all times were some supplies that he was supposed to bring back to the shop behind the stage for the set builders. He grabbed a can of red spray paint, and approached the display. In large drippy letters, he sprayed NO WAR across the cardboard stand set up to hold fliers, and a giant peace sign across the poster.

As he took a step back to admire his work, red drips oozing down the paper like blood, he felt a hand clamp down painfully on his shoulder. The can of paint fell out of his hand, clanging to the ground and echoing through the halls that were not as empty as he had assumed they were. He was turned around and bodily shoved up against the brick wall, the spray paint, still wet on the poster, seeping through his t-shirt.

"So you're our vandal. I would never have expected this from an honor student." Principle Blackman looked livid. "Perhaps a Saturday spent in detention will help you sort out your priorities?"

_~*Nathan Petrelli*~_

He tried to keep his cool as his teammate chuckled mirthlessly. Deep, calming breaths, focusing inward, trying to ignore the asshole who he had once thought of as a friend. He threw his football helmet into his locker and stared pulling his shoulder pads off.

"Yeah, someone should teach that little faggot a lesson, Matthew Shepherd style."

The cap he was trying to tighten around his temper cracked, and with the propulsion that the released steam offered him, he shot across the locker room. Before he realised what he was doing, he had his teammate pressed back into the lockers, a hand clamped around his throat, as if trying to squeeze all traces of the last hateful sentence uttered from the idiot's body. The boy's eyes were bulging with mingled surprise, and lack of air, his already broken nose quickly turning dark purple as his face reddened.

"You watch your fucking mouth, Anderson. I don't want to hear anything like that ever again, we clear?" Nathan spat out.

The boy nodded spastically, and clawed uselessly at the hand that was clamped down on his windpipe.

"Excuse me, Petrelli. Just what do you think you are doing?"

In surprise Nathan released his teammate, who slid downward three inches and started coughing. He hadn't realized he had been holding the other boy off the ground.

"In my office, NOW!"

"Yes, coach Bentley."

He left his defensive guardsman sputtering, and turned to follow the coach into the office off the back of the locker rooms. The rest of his teammates stared at him, wide eyed and slack jawed, as he passed. As he entered the office and took a seat in front of the desk, the coach slammed the door.

"What in the hell were you thinking attacking our best defensive man so close to the homecoming game against Oakland? As starting quarterback, I thought you'd have more sense."

Nathan kept silent, breathing like a winded buffalo, still trying to reign in his temper. He kept his gaze focused downward.

"Well, to teach you some team pride, how about detention on Saturday? I expected more from a varsity letterman."

_~*Claire Bennette*~_

"Sorry about that-" the principal entered his office and closed the door behind him, "-a student was just found vandalizing school property, I had to deal with it right away."

She focused down at the tissue that she was twisting in her hands, tears of frustration collecting at the corners of her eyes as she watched the principal sit down behind his desk. He took in her red puffy eyes, and felt obligated to speak.

"You have to see how this looks to everyone. I mean, you say he attacked you, but there's not a scratch on you. He, on the other hand-"

"But sir, I'm telling the truth."

"This is out of my hands. You beat up another student. Since it occurred at a school function, we are going to have to take action. You will be serving detention on Saturday."

"But sir, I-"

"Given the seriousness of Mr. Anderson's injuries, inflicted so soon before the homecoming game, be thankful the law isn't getting called in, Miss Bennette. The game against Oakland-"

"Who cares about the game against Oakland?"

Principal Blackman's face darkened. "That doesn't sound like school spirit, Miss Bennette. I suggest you take this Saturday to ponder proper lady-like etiquette, and whether you would like to retain your place on this cheerleading squad."

_~* Hiro Nakamura *~_

He woke with a ringing in his ears, the worst headache he had ever felt pounding through his skull. The ringing intensified, then lessened, intensified and lessened, and it took him a minute to realise that the doorbell ringing had been adding to the pounding in his head. He looked out the window. Why was he in bed in the middle of the day? He tried to fight the grogginess, and remember what had happened.

"Hiro, koko ni kinasai!"

He made his way downstairs, following his father's voice to the living room. There, his guidance counsellor sat opposite his father.

"Your advisor had just come by to inform me that you have not been to school for the last two days."

"But, father. It is Sunday."

His advisor looked concerned, but his father's angry look just intensified. "It is not Sunday. It is Tuesday."

Hiro could swear it was Sunday. The last thing he remembered, he had been walking home from the library, and a man with horned rimmed glasses and his arm in a sling had come up and asked him to help load a cart full of groceries into the back of a van.

Confused, he looked up at his guidance counsellor.

"Well, I only came by to make sure everything was okay. Hiro is a very dependable student. As he has never been a problem in the past, we can let this go. Why don't I-"

"No, Hiro has shirked on his duty, and therefore must be punished."

"Oh, no sir. It's not a big deal. I just wanted to make sure he was oka-"

"Studies are the most important thing for Hiro, in neglecting his studies, he has brought shame upon himself, and me."

The counsellor looked shocked, but as it appeared that Mr Nakamura would not relent in this, she offered. "Well, there is an all-day Saturday detention."

"That would be appropriate. He could use the time to catch up on his studies."

"Alright. Hiro, be there at 8 am."

He nodded at her, head hung in shame.

The counsellor got up to go, but on her way out she felt obliged to say, "You know, Mr Nakamura. Hiro is the best in his class. He could probably miss the next three years of his life and still be ahead of most his classmates. If any catching up needs to be done, it is they who need to catch up to him."

_~* Sylar *~_

He stood, leaning back against his car, a cigarette hanging from his lips. He didn't even really smoke, but in this situation, he found having a pack useful. A teacher scowled at him from across the street, but since he had parallel parked on the opposite side of the road, he was outside of school bounds, and she could do nothing about it. He pulled the leather jacket he had thrown over one shoulder on and took a mouth full of smoke. Letting it out in smoke rings, he whispered to himself, "Let's do this."

He walked across the road, and just as he was about to step from the sidewalk onto the grass, he took one last puff, and threw the cigarette butt out onto the street. He held the smoke in his mouth until he walked right by the teacher, where he let it out, making sure to blow it in her direction. Since he was five feet away, and had only had a mouth full of smoke, it dissipated within a few inches of his body, but she got the message.

"Pick up your litter, young man."

Hypocrisy. "I'm sorry, I guess I'm a little unclear about this school's policy on waste management, what with the article I read in the paper this morning." It had been an article about a problem with formaldehyde from illegally dumped foetal pigs from the biology classes seeping into the local groundwater near the Shermer landfill.

Her scowl intensified. "Pick. It. Up."

"Obviously, you haven't read it," he shot back as he turned to pick up his cigarette butt, he held it in his hand and tossed it into the garbage can on his way into the school at 8 am on a Saturday for detention.

-- -- -- -- --

A/N: I apologise in for any typos or anything that makes no sense in here. I finished this in a fit of insomnia, and I promise I'll come back and fix things in a few days, when my brain is functioning correctly.

I included this prologue in an attempt to introduce the characters, and give preliminary info on how they all got into detention. More details about that will be to come, though. Of course, I changed around the characters a bit too.

There is of course Sylar, the criminal; Nathan, the jock; Clair, the pom pom princess; and Hiro, the brain. I had trouble figuring out the basket case, Instead I wrote Peter as the queer drama/art geek, which is what I was back in high school. He doesn't come across as very outcast-y right now, but it'll soon be evident.

I figure I'll focus most on the characters of Sylar (cos he's my fave) and Peter. The criminal and the basket case were always the characters I identified most with in the movie, and they are the characters I'm going to have the most fun with in this one.


End file.
